Vengeance Will Be Mine!
by parakeetfood
Summary: They shouldn't have stolen her luggage... Harry Potter X Darkwing Duck. Sort of. One-shot.


This was written for my friend Estrella85, after someone stole her luggage in early 2007 while she was visiting England. She never got it back, but I wrote a quick, ridiculous story to cheer her up.

And I apologize for any inaccurate Britishisms/cultural references, having never traveled there. So, so sorry.

* * *

It was a quiet, humid Spring night in a filthy alley in the commercial district of London. Darkness pervaded- the moon was full, but the clouds blocked much of its light.

Dressed all in black, Estrella was on the prowl.

She knew her luggage was taken to this particular area of the city and the clues she had gathered earlier in the day all pointed to the building she stood near. The fact that it was a decrepit old bookstore further led her to believe this was the place her things were stashed.

She removed the replacement backpack she had recently bought and opened it to pull out a dark purple cloth mask, a large, floppy, dark purple fedora and a ridiculously extravagant cape of the same color. After donning the clothing, she produced a grappling gun, a few smoke bombs, and a utility belt to carry them.

"Let's get dangerous," She whispered to herself in a deadly tone. Some heads were gonna get busted.

She stowed her backpack behind a few trash cans and crouched near a filthy basement window. From a compartment on her belt, she took out glass cutting components- something resembling a compass for a classroom blackboard with a laser blade instead of a piece of chalk, and a large suction cup. She attached the suction cup to the window, and adjusting the compass to the appropriate radius, she carefully sliced a large, Estrella-sized hole. A gentle tug on the cup allowed the piece of glass to pop out with a light scraping sound.

A few seconds and one strange, tingly sensation later, the masked vigilante found herself in the pitch dark, dank, mold scented basement of… the bookstore? She had just become aware of the noise coming from the ceiling- sounds of foot falls, chair legs scraping, garbled chatter and lively music drifted down to her ears.

Frowning, she reached to flick on her handy dandy belt flashlight to inspect her surroundings. Boxes sat piled in a semi-haphazard manner near half a dozen wooden barrels, their contents unknown.

Estrella walked over to one of the larger barrels and used the end of her grappling gun to pry off the top. The odor of strong liquor assaulted her nose and forced her to take a few stumbling steps backward. She wrapped part of her cape around her face as she approached again to replace the lid. …And decided to just trust she was surrounded by a whole heck of a lot of booze.

She wondered what kind of a place it was- more of a bar or restaurant than a place that held books and a reputation for silence, especially at night. Or maybe the British just did things differently. Looking up and narrowing her eyes, she decided that she would just have to make an extra effort to be silent while investigating the rest of the building.

She turned off her light and carefully made her way up the creaky, dusty, narrow wooden stairs. Lightly running her hands over the door's surface, she found the doorknob she'd searched for. Estrella turned the knob and slowly opened the door.

A faint light spilled from the open doorway, leading her to believe this was a room no one was using at the moment. *Perfect.* She thought as she snuck in, shutting the door most of the way behind her.

Her eyes, now adjusted to the semi-dark, scanned for anything remotely suitcase-shaped. Unfortunately, this seemed to be a sort of pantry. Shelves lined the walls all the way to the ceiling, holding bottles, boxes, and other generally food-shaped things.

A rustling noise sounded from her right and she immediately crouched with a smoke bomb in hand. A rat the size of an adult raccoon had been burrowing in a grain sack, and noticed Estrella. It became still for a few seconds, seemingly weighing its options, but abruptly ran off toward the open basement door and disappeared. Estrella made a mental note to find a different exit.

The rat's thumping feet were obviously picked up by somebody, as out of the din from the other side of the door came a low, rough female voice, "Oy! Who's there? 'Zat you, Philip? I told y' it would be the last time I'd let y' come in late, y' can't fool me by comin' in the back way…"

Clomping steps could be heard nearing the door, and Estrella frantically looked for a place to hide. She spied a large, empty burlap bag, threw it on and attempted her best imitation of a sack of potatoes. As her hat was made of indestructo-fiber, and therefore really bendy, it fit right in the bag, still on her head.

The door opened wide, letting in a bright light, loud bar noise and a heavy dose of smoky air. "Philip- you in 'ere? Hmm. Guess not. Say, that flour sack looks a sight lumpier than I left it…"

*Did it really say flour on the outside?* Estrella asked herself. Well, better now than never, she supposed. Just as she was planning her dramatic smoke-backed spring out of the sack, a loud crashing emanated from the adjacent room. The woman let loose a curse and rapidly stomped out of the pantry to shout remands at whatever obstinate pub–goer may have been causing the commotion.

Estrella breathed a sigh of relief. This was good- she would have a better chance of sneaking in and out with her suitcase and then still have time to punish the thieves if she played her cards right.

She stood and reached up to remove the bag when she heard several loud bangs and an announcement in an authoritative, deep male voice, "By order of the Ministry of Magic, you have been found in violation of codes 48 C, section 5, line 2, operating without a liquor license and also 845 E, section 2, line 19, use of an illegal floo extension by way of tampering. You are all under arrest and will be held in the Ministry's detention center, where you will await trial in the morning. A barrier ward has been cast about the perimeter of this property to prevent any escape. After you are processed, anyone wishing to contract the services of a solicitor may do so at that time. That is all."

If the lights in the small room were on, the door to the other room further open, or if a sack weren't covering her head, one would have observed that Estrella's eyes were the approximately the size of dinner plates.

*This isn't real,* She thought. Sure, measured footsteps neared the pantry. *Orrr, maybe it is.* She amended, deciding at that instant to turn her bag around, squat on the ground behind some other sacks and boxes and pretend to be potatoes again.

The pantry door opened wider and the footfalls stopped. A younger man's voice intoned, "Is there anyone in here? We detected a warm body- if you do not turn yourself in upon the count of ten, you will be in for more trouble than you bargained. Ten. Nine. Eight…"

*They know someone's in here! Think, Estrella!* She goaded herself.

"Three", the man counted.

*When had he gotten that far?* She panicked. Only one thing came to mind and she used it.

"Meowww." She… meowed… in her best 'girl pretending to be a potato sack in a flour sack pretending to be a cat' impression.

A heavy sigh was heard from the man near the doorway. "Just a cat!" He yelled, presumably to the others with him, and calmly exited the way he entered, closing the door behind him.

Estrella sat still, not knowing whether to laugh or fall over in relief. *I can't believe that worked!* She thought.

Only one mission left… find her things. Once she was certain every person had left the building, she got up, depositing the sack on the ground, all of a sudden very glad the ginormous rat hadn't entered while she was hiding- she may have lost her composure and ended up arrested, thrown into… *Ha ha.* She thought. She couldn't even allow herself to think of the absurdity of that possibility. *Harry Potter is fictional, and I'm delusional.*

She opened the door to the odorous bar area and looked around. All the lights had been turned out, but the clouds outside had cleared, allowing bright moonlight to illuminate the room and aid her search.

Behind the bar she found a trap door near the tiny sink- which looked and smelled like its use was strictly limited to emptying old drinks rather than any sort of cleaning. There was no handle with which to pull up the door. Then she noticed the left lever of the sink reflected the moonlight much better than that of the right… odd since, again, the sink was obviously not for washing things.

Against her better judgment and desperate for her favorite pair of jeans, Estrella pulled the gleaming lever toward her on a whim. And, as she was standing directly on the secret opening, was rewarded with a drop down a chute, the wooden doors immediately snapping shut above her head.

She slid down a dark pipe for about a minute before she was spit out and landed unceremoniously on a large pile of clothing. Large slashes of moonlight revealed the place to be not much larger than was the basement of the previous building, except the contents were most decidedly different.

She lay sprawled atop one of three roughly six-foot tall and wide piles of clothes. At the base of them and along the walls were stacked at least four dozen suitcases of varying sizes and shapes. This place must be where they collected and looked through luggage stolen from other people.

*Oh, man…* She thought. *If my stuff is in here, it's either been pawed through or randomly waiting in one of the luggage stacks…*

Estrella figured that since hers was probably one of the most recent, her suitcase must be toward the front and possibly unopened. Then she remembered. She had attached a glow in the dark tag to the suitcase!

She grabbed a dark t-shirt from the large clothing pile and lightly jumped up onto some boxes underneath the vent (she's a superhero of sorts, and some of them can do this). Deftly, she wove the shirt through the bars to block the moon's glow. Turning on her super-duper retractable black light attached to her utility belt, she passed it over the stack of luggage and after ten minutes, found the suitcase. After replacing the black light, using her normal belt light, and extricating her stuff, she concerned herself with finding the exit.

Looking up at the vent and throwing the shirt aside, she knew just the tools for the job.

She stood back near the wall at the opposite side of the room and threw her floppy indestructo-hat at the slatted openings and tore clear a rectangular, Estrella-sized hole. Her hat flew back into the room again like a boomerang into Estrella's waiting hand.

Jumping up onto the crates, she looked out to where she might escape. If you are ever in such a situation of escaping, you should do the same, because if perhaps like in Estrella's case, you are somehow improbably faced with finding yourself 15 stories off the ground, it is a wise course of action.

Estrella remembered that her cape would only let her fly down from buildings up to a height of 14 stories, after which the warranty would be voided and she'd very possibly fall to her death. She pulled her head back in, realizing she would have to make use of her grappling gun. But before she did, there was one thing she had to do. Exact some sweet retribution against the thieves.

Grinning as if she were insane, she dug through her many belt compartments until she found exactly what she wanted (one marker, not super-duper). She located a white sheet from the clothes pile ('cause some travelers don't trust hotel sheets) and gleefully attacked it with the marker.

Next she grabbed her luggage, climbed halfway out the hole and used her nuclear powered pneumatic nail gun to attach the sheet to the wall of the building under her.

Replacing her marker and nail gun, she unholstered her grappling gun. She sat backwards out the window and aimed up at the roof of the building across the street. Skillfully standing up on the sill, she pressed the recoil release and shot her way up to the next roof with only a slightly painful slam and scrape against the brick wall.

Jumping her way down to the 14th floor via fire escapes, she leapt off the building with the suitcase in her teeth, using her cape to glide safely to the ground, landing in the same alleyway she started. Just as she had calculated.

She found her hidden backpack and put her super hero gear back inside, silently congratulating herself on not using any smoke bombs and therefore not having to buy anymore. Those little things were expensive, and only available from this really strange guy in New York City who liked to wear a scarily realistic duck costume, bad sweater vests, and no pants. He would also only to refer to New York City as, "St. Canard". She shuddered at the memory of their most recent meeting and noted to herself that she really had to change suppliers.

Estrella walked back to her hostel and snuck into the building, leaving her suitcase by the unmanned front desk, making it seem as if someone found her luggage and silently returned it in the night. She climbed into bed just before daybreak, taking care not to disturb any of her roommates.

Four hours later, minutes prior to catching her train which would take her to the ferry to Ireland (newly recovered suitcase in hand), she bought a newspaper and noticed the front page which displayed her early morning's handiwork.

"LUGGAGE SMUGGLING CHAIN REVEALED", the headline read. Below it was a picture of a dowdy brick building sporting a large white rectangle with the message, "THIS WAY TO THE STOLEN GOODS" with an arrow pointing up to a small, irregular hole in the wall.

Estrella snickered as she showed her ticket to the attendant. The young man gave her an odd look, but she did not notice it. She boarded the train and allowed herself a huge grin and a quiet bout of half-crazed laughter. Revenge was hers, her stuff was back, and all was well with the world.


End file.
